 Originally Posted by katielovestrees
Yeah, unfortunately most people are too fucking disenchanted (to use a word from the film) to actually give a shit.
I was talking to my friend last night and she asked what I was watching so I told her. Her response? "even i have to say that sounds gay lol" and "omg how u watching this its soooo fucking boring lmao."
A part of me died a little inside.
Yeah, that's essentially exactly what I had in mind when I said that. Or more specifically - talking to my mom about anything of this nature and after I bring up some perfectly logical points, and she fails to counter them properly, she just dismisses it with "will you just give it a rest!? All this arguing wears me out!" (you know, despite the fact that it wasn't an argument) or something like that.
 Originally Posted by Carôusoul
Again, I'm probably not thinking of the exact same sensation or experience of the OP. But I am talking about a profound connection with everything in the world, and not being detached. I know how easy it is to condemn, I know cause I've done that most of the time.
When I go out into the town on a cold friday night here, and all I see is hardly dressed girls screaming and shouting, vomiting and drinking and creepy and overmasculine guys trying to fuck anything that's drunk. When I see these same people repeating this every weekend and living a banal and dead existence everyday in some shit filled office or stacking shelves and they only seem to have a hatred for the world. They only seem to be waiting for the next superficial release. Lives literally based on acquisition of 'things' and people being counted as another thing with this.
The problem, I think, is that what I'm talking about, this understanding, is far far deeper and more profound than anything we assume it to be. It's more profound than what you "do" in your life, more than how you act, what you want, what you even think. Like I said, it may in no way be expressed through the way someone lives their life, and they may look to us absolutely lifeless, mundane. That's how they do look to us. We think we have seen, or we have, something that they don't. I think it's true that maybe we recognise or think about this muchmore, we consider it's implications.
Why I basically have faith in people, is through my own experience of the world, directly. It seems to me that simply my experiencing, of everything in the world, this absolute sense of 'being in the world', this dasein. I remember times when I have been selfish, greedy, superficial, everything negative we recognise in people here. BUt always always I have been profoundly connected with the world in a way which has never been absent. When it would appear to the world that I'm doing nothing but a superficial pursuit, and I myself would only be thinking of greed and what I want, there has been present a sense of connection, that I did not RECOGNISE, or UNDERSTAND. This to me is one of the most profound states imaginable. I cannot concieve of consciousness without it. It seems to me to be a part of what it is to be conscious.
Most people won't find significance or recognise this sense. I have talked to enough people to find absolute wonder in all of them though. It is part of being human, to be enchanted with the world. Some show it in ways so subtle we don't see them, but I guarantee it's there. This is very hard to explain, but you know what it's like simply to experience the world? To be within the world totally, you don't need to be reflecting on this, theorising, simply to be. This is what it means to be a being. To be conscious. This is beautiful and wonderful, and though you may be superficial, disconnected on one level, at a deeper level, everyone is in this. It's somewhat beyond distinctions.
I have faith, that people, human beings, are complex. I know they are. They are so much more complex than we can imagine, and for us to cast such judgement that maybe all we see of them is all there is to see, it belittles the complexity. In a red faced fat man guzzling beer and shouting at passers by, I can find more beauty and complexity than the stars.
Think of a human life, any. Think of all the love and hate and the dreams and the billion emotions and the appreciation and the desires and the disgust and the interactions and the moments of a little smile to someone and all just perfect experience, pure experience of the world. all these things. Everyone has all of this. This is not mundane, no matter how you cast it, and to experience the world, in any way, is amazing, to me. On the very surface someone can be superficial, greedy, evil, but the mere fact of their being, their experiencing, it's a wonderful end in itself. And for me, it's evidence in every human being of a connection to the profound or as you might want to call it "the divine".
I'm not good at explaining this particular point, and this has been heavily ham fisted.
The same thing happened in me while reading this post that happened when i read your last post. You took what I understand, and tied to together, and I think you just broke the "the Tao that cannot be named is not the true Tao" rule.
To quote Terence Mckenna, "That's it! That's it! Now I understand!"
 Originally Posted by stonedape
I would really like to be positive about people, but it seems like the people just a little younger than me are extremely superficial. It's like they worship superficiality. It seems to me like most peoples minds are horribly out of shape. People spend lots of time text messaging and less time actually conversing(some people will even text someone while in the middle of a conversation with someone else). They also seem to be spending more time watching television and less time reading. To them the quality of information is irrelevant. As long as there is near constant transfer of the familiar, the popular. To them the connection is all about feeling connected, feeling the oneness of all things. They care very little about the end result, as long as they feel like a part of it. To them length is a negative quality because they can experience more connections if they are all short. They have their minds in so many places at once that they are really nowhere.
When the consciousness flows out of people in these sorts of patterns, it's hard for them to break out of the shell of the ego and actually enter into reality. Most people's interactions are not actually interactions with other people but interactions with a mental projection(a verbal hologram) of a person. When interactions are like this it is impossible for them to be meaningful. When people's relationships are based on meaningless interactions they are very unstable. Thus people look to gangs for stability.
They look to the Government or the Church or wherever they feel like they fit in. They look to groups that have a place in society. They find a place in that group and then they have a place in society. Then the sense of existential angst goes away and they can be happy citizens. I'm not trying to say that people ought to feel alienated, but the truth is that we live in a society based on alienation. We live in a society of red vs blue, black vs white. Your this, I'm that, and that's where we fit into society. People derive their sense of self from a verbal hologram that they've created, a collection of labels. In doing this they ignore what they actually are and miss life as it happens.
I think you're right, and I feel like this helps to reconcile this apparent superficiality with what Carou is saying. That even though people may be superficial and greedy, they still strive for that oneness in one way or another. It's just that they've been distracted somehow (be it a cultural phenomenon or what else) from the 'inherent perfection' -- that the mere act of being is deeply rooted in this transcendence.
Or to put it simply, "we are all gods suffering from amnesia" (I am probably paraphrasing something Alan Watts)
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